At the midpoint of the season, "Night Country" just turned a bright spotlight on Annie K's murder and her connection to the frozen Tsalal scientists. In an episode full of big reveals, a haunting video of her dying moments takes the cake. Read on for our "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 3 recap and analysis, in which we tease out what happened between Annie and Clark — and how the crooked spiral could be the answer to the killings in Ennis.
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Directed by Issa López, who co-wrote the script alongside "Fear the Walking Dead" scribe Alan Page Arriaga, Episode 3 offers the biggest lead in the Annie Kowtok case yet as we meet her hairdresser friend who introduced her to Tsalal. From there, we're reacquainted with the Native hunter briefly glimpsed in the season premiere. He left his post at Tsalal right before Annie's death, and his preoccupation with the zombiefied Lund is yet another hint that there's something supernatural afoot north of the Arctic Circle.
Elsewhere, Danvers and Navarro do proper "True Detective" car rides together. They're a showcase for Jodie Foster's mastery and Kali Reis' star-making turn. We also get key insight into the joint cover-up that led to their falling-out.
Could Annie's discovery have involved the crooked spiral? And what does Clark's job at Tsalal have to do with the spiral and his murdered colleagues? In the below "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 3 recap, we're digging into it all.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for "True Detective" Season 4, Episode 3.
That Annie K Flashback + Danvers and Navarro's Secret
Michele K. Short/HBO
We open with a flashback to six years ago. Navarro (Reis) arrives at Annie's natural birthing center to arrest her for property damage to the mining facilities, but delays long enough for Annie to help deliver a baby alongside other Iñupiat women. While performing life-saving CPR on the newborn, Annie whispers to one of the fellow midwives something like, "We have to disappear." Then, she submits to arrest. Annie doesn't seem like one to skip town due to mild legal trouble, so why would this arrest inspire her to "disappear"?
Back in the present, Hank (John Hawkes) leads the search for Clark with the help of his "hillbilly" citizen brigade. Navarro reminds him not to shoot Clark on sight, but Hank is hot to kill the man — which begs the question: What would Hank have to lose if Clark told his side of the story?
Danvers (Foster) opens up to Pete (Finn Bennett) about her falling-out with Navarro after the Wheeler case, their last investigation together. William Wheeler was a jailbird who beat his 18-year-old girlfriend, but she repeatedly refused to report him. Ultimately, Danvers and Navarro were too late to save the girl. Danvers claims Wheeler killed her, then shot himself, before they could stop him.
But the flashback tells a different story: Danvers and Navarro found Wheeler alive. He even whistled at them. We think Navarro shot and killed Wheeler in a fit of rage and Danvers covered for her. That would explain Danvers and Navarro's hushed mention of the Wheeler case in Episode 2. Maybe Navarro recognized Wheeler's whistle. Or maybe Wheeler murdered Navarro's mother (more on that later).
Annie's Friend Susan Implicates Hank
While searching for Clark, Navarro chucks an orange onto the ice and it mysteriously rolls back to her. Hank's goons had backpacks full of oranges either for some much-needed Vitamin C or to test for weak spots on the ice. It's possible one of them sent the orange back just to mess with her. In any case, oranges represent impending doom in gangster cinema ("The Godfather"). Shows like "Fargo" have used the trope to foreshadow a character's demise, so we're sadly putting Navarro on death watch.
Danvers and Navarro dig in to the evidence taken from Clark's trailer, which includes photos of him and Annie looking very much in love. They make excellent partner detectives, even if Navarro tires of Danvers' Socratic questioning. A streak of Annie's electric blue hair dye on a photo leads them to her hairdresser friend Susan, who gives them their first real lead in the Tsalal-Annie case:
Years ago, Annie begged Susan to accompany her on a haircutting run to Tsalal. There, she and Clark met and hit it off. He was especially taken with her crooked spiral tattoo, which Annie got after seeing the symbol in her dreams. Susan was dating Oliver Tugack, Tsalal's equipment engineer, at the time. Curiously, Oliver left his job at the Station right before Annie was killed.
What's more, Susan reveals that she called Hank after Annie's death and told him about her secret relationship with Clark. Hank buried that evidence and kicked Navarro off the case. His defense? Annie K had too many boyfriends to count. (Which is obviously not true.) Navarro is livid, but Danvers won't write up Hank for negligence. Not yet, at least. We suspect she's playing the long game with Hank, waiting for him to reveal himself.
Navarro's Mother Was Murdered
Michele K. Short/HBO
Navarro opens up to her beau Kovic in exchange for information about Oliver Tugack's whereabouts. Her mother was originally from a gold mining camp in Ennis, but left for Boston at age 15 and married her father. He was abusive, so the three women moved back to Ennis. But her mother's mental state declined. She heard voices and had psychotic episodes until, one day, she left the house and was later found dead. The killer was never identified. (We have our suspicions about William Wheeler).
Whereas Navarro regretfully never learned her Iñupiat name, Leah (Isabella Star LeBlanc) is on a quest to connect to her Native heritage. She attends a protest against the mine led by Iñupiat Natives. Their efforts are ramping up in the wake of a stillbirth probably caused by a poisoned water supply. Danvers is terrified that Leah's involvement will put a target on her back. But, being a mother who lost a child herself, she attends the baby's wake led by a group of Iñupiat women.
On the ice, Navarro briefly glimpses Danvers' dead son carrying his polar bear plushie. She slips and, for a moment, her head injury (or magic) transports her back to her time in the war. In a desert landscape, Danvers' son whispers to her, "Tell my mommy—," but the rest is unintelligible. When she comes to, she gets a call from Jules' co-worker saying her sister had an episode at the bar and ran off. Navarro instinctively heads to an abandoned ship in the ice and finds Jules (Aka Niviâna) sitting there pensively. "I think bad thoughts," she says.
Anchorage forensics can't travel to the corpsicle due to a blizzard, so Pete calls on his veterinarian cousin Vince (Vilhelm Þór Neto) to give his take. Vince thinks the Tsalal scientists died before they froze. They look too agitated to have simply succumbed to hypothermia. He suggests they died from cardiac arrest, like the caribou he's seen "die of plain fright."
Lund Awakes + Annie's Haunting Final Moments
Oliver's name was nowhere to be found in Tsalal's records (suspicious), but the man does indeed exist. He's the Native hunter who watched the caribou run off a cliff in Episode 1. Danvers and Navarro find him living in a nomad camp. He didn't know the Tsalal scientists had died. Curiously, his immediate reaction is to ask whether Lund, in particular, was dead. When he learns he's in hospital, he throws Danvers and Navarro out at gunpoint.
Right on time, Lund has regained some sort of consciousness. Danvers and Navarro race to the hospital to speak with him, but he's in terrible shape. Both his legs were amputated, and he lost his eyesight. He screams like a madman before squeaking out some explanation of what happened that night at Tsalal: "We woke her, and now she's out there in the ice. She came for us in the dark."
Just then, a fight breaks out between Hank's hillbilly mafia and the cops in the waiting room. Navarro is left alone with Lund. He stops writhing for a moment to deliver this message in a creepy "Exorcist" voice: "Hello, Evangeline. Your mother says hello. She's waiting for you." He points his finger ahead (like how Travis pointed Rose toward the scientists) and flatlines. It seems like he's been possessed by something. Whatever it is, Oliver had an inkling that there was something going on with Lund.
Pete cracked Annie's phone to find her chilling final moments on video. She's recording herself outside and whispers, wide-eyed, "It's here, I found it. My name is Annie Kowtok. If anything happens to me—." She's cut off by an attack, which causes her to drop the phone. The remainder of the audio is of Annie screaming.
What Did Annie Find In the Ice?
Michele K. Short/HBO
We think Annie may have found the crooked spiral shape she dreamt of in the ice. Like "True Detective" Season 1, the spiral could mark the site of a pedophile ring connected to the Tuttle family, which funds Tsalal's research into miracle microorganisms. If Rose (Fiona Shaw) is to be believed, the spiral is an ancient symbol "older than the ice." Maybe the Tuttles are sponsoring Tsalal's investigation into the origin of the spiral, and maybe the mine is involved in the pursuit, too.
That's one way of explaining Annie's murder: She kept her relationship with Clark a secret because she was using him to gain access to Tsalal. When she found the spiral, she discovered proof that (1) Native women, going back to Navarro's mother, are being systematically murdered by a Tuttle-adjacent cult, or (2) Tsalal and the mine are jointly poisoning Ennis' water supply in an effort to unearth the ancient, evil and powerful crooked spiral. It's bonkers, yes. But it gives Tsalal and the mine a clear motive.
How does Clark fit in? We know that he was a paleomicrobiologist at Tsalal, which means he was the expert on digging up living organisms. Maybe Clark defected when he learned that they were researching an organism or natural pattern resembling Annie's crooked spiral tattoo. Maybe it led to his realization that his colleagues killed her, and maybe he murdered them to avenge her.
New episodes of "True Detective" Season 4 premiere Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and Max.
